


Seven People in a Warzone

by theoddling



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Angst, Post-Canon, Post-Serenity (2005), War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 10:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11644473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoddling/pseuds/theoddling
Summary: A bit of a character-study of the seven crew members left at the end of Serenity, used to tell the story of what may have happened as a result of the movie (ignoring the comics that now exist).





	1. Chapter 1

River stared at the man who was no longer a man. There was no vacuum but still his body was draining of blood quickly. No more than twenty seconds until it was empty and all the blood was on the floor she’d guess. The gun beside him was broken, twisted and splintered, belching smoke from the barrel that opened like a deadly flower. It wasn’t a gun; it was a dragon in its death throes, just like the man who’d held it. She laughed. Endings were funny. Everyone thought death was sad but it wasn’t, it was irony and that was funny.  
~  
Simon shook his head. He was supposed to be a doctor in the core, working in a nice hospital helping Alliance officials recover from heart attacks and the like. Yet here he was, in the middle of the biggest battle he’d ever seen, even descriptions from history and images he’d seen of other wars seemed so tiny and insignificant compared to these horrors, horrors he wasn’t fully prepared for in the beginning. Triage medicine was not his favorite thing in the world, especially when he knew people he cared about were in terrible danger and could be the next people he knelt beside in the dust and war mud, dirt turned thick and damp with blood.  
~  
Zoe knelt in the trench beside Mal. They were in a position of relative safety, hidden by natural walls of stone. She had never expected to be fighting alongside him this way again, believed they’d left behind the fact that they were rebels and soldiers, had hoped they’d stopped battling the Alliance when they finally left Serenity Valley. She should have known better. After all, she was the one who told Simon that you never leave Serenity, you just learn to live there. And this time living there meant fighting, and probably dying beside Mal in a brutal warzone, almost wishing to be back at Mr. Universe’s compound facing off with Reavers. At least then she knew what the final result would be if they lost.   
~  
Mal frowned. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He'd dragged all of them into a war they had no business getting in and they were all going to be killed for it. Book had been about the Operative's insane desire to stop River, there was nothing he could have done. But Wash, Wash had been his fault. He'd decided to make the run for Miranda. He was the one who'd decided to lead the Reavers back to the Alliance fleet. He'd set it all up, arranged the senseless loss. He'd nearly lost them all and he would never forgive himself for any of it. He thought he was done with the war, but it was like it had never ended. He was struggling to lead a ragtag bunch to stop the Alliance, a civil war just like before, but this time with the backing of the 'Verse. The only cost for the Browncoats finally winning would be his crew, a price he hated himself for being almost willing to, for even considering paying.   
~  
Inara grimaced. Mal had jokingly, mockingly called her an ambassador before and she'd met with diplomats plenty of times but never for the actual act of diplomacy and certainly never to spy on them, using her training to gain information on the enemy. Having an enemy was another thing she hadn't adjusted to yet. But war changed situations, destroyed comfort zones, and created new people out of the survivors. She was learning that very quickly. She had to wonder though if there would be any survivors. The fighting was at its highest point, senselessly violent with thousands dying every day. Was there anyone left who meant something to her or were they all lost already?  
~  
Kaylee wanted to cry. She wasn't a fighter, wasn't cut out for war. They'd put her somewhere relatively safe most of the time, had her monitoring communications and sending messages to important persons in a code that changed every day. She didn't understand it but she did it anyway. There were times however that she had to go out into the fighting. Whenever there was something that needed fixing, she went and did it, with lots of soldiers watching her back. She felt bad that they kept giving her a protection detail, but at the same time it kept her alive so she was grateful. Some things that broke though, she couldn't fix and that was what hurt, more than the occasional bullet or cut or that broken wrist she had that one time from getting run over by an improperly parked vehicle. Serenity was lost in the first days, she weren't a fighting ship and the damage done wasn't fixable with all the time in the 'Verse. And then there were the people. So many of them, all lost and broken and nothing she could do about it. She hated war, that was for sure and it made her cry hot, angry, miserable tears all the time.   
~  
Jayne dodged a bullet. He weren't no soldier and he'd said as much. He was in it for himself and not some great cause or whatever it was Mal and the others wanted to fight for. He'd thought about leaving. Got so far as putting a ship in atmo before something made him turn around. It weren't loyalty and it weren't love, he knew that, promised himself he felt nothing for them, but when he saw Serenity go down he felt like he was choking and going to be sick, maybe that was what made him turn around. He wished he hadn't though because everything he'd done since had been totally against his nature. He worked alone still, which was good, he didn't think he'd have been able to deal with other people that often, but he worked for other people, putting himself last instead of first, even if that meant he might get hurt or even die. He hated himself and Mal and everyone else for it. So he tried leaving again and was shot out of the sky. He was in too deep and if he wanted to leave, it'd take leaving the 'Verse entirely and he weren't ready to do that, so he went back to work and that meant running through rains of lead sometimes just to get where they needed him and he knew one of these days his luck would run out, but he hoped to hell it wasn't on this gorram awful rock.


	2. Chapter 2

Jayne had been the first to die, a fact that surprised none of them when they thought about it objectively. But war wasn't objective. It was emotional, primal. It was like sex, Kaylee decided, all wild and passionate and out of control. But unlike sex, war didn't make anybody happy, unless they were real sick in the head. So they all cried and mourned and felt about Jayne ways they never would have if he'd been alive. They reminisced about all the stupid things he'd done, all the things that had pissed them off when they happened but now seemed different. They were part of Jayne's charm, and they all missed him. Even Simon had nice things to say about their fallen friend.  
~  
Zoe's death was nearly as expected as Jayne's and even more painful. They'd all responded again with drinking and laughing and crying. But as River'd pointed out, in a rare moment of profound lucidity, she was happier now than she had been in her last months of life. She wasn't stuck in the past or the war, she was free of the corporeal prison. She was with Wash again. They were together laughing, joking, playing with little plastic dinosaurs, having the family they'd both, sometimes secretly, wanted, and watching them all. They'd all felt better after that, but the hole in their heart still gaped and ached.  
~  
Inara hadn't died, at least they didn't know for sure that she was dead. She'd just vanished one day when she was on her way to more possible peace negotiations. No one knew what happened to her, but her shuttle was found empty and damaged, the bodyguards she'd been assigned were all dead in some sort of explosion. So they all assumed that she was gone. Mal and Kaylee took it hardest. Kaylee took every death hard though, and Mal, well it had taken losing her for him to finally admit that he loved her. The others hadn't spoken to him for a week after that.  
~  
Losing Simon had been the last straw for Kaylee. She'd shut herself down after that and was dead long before she took the bullet to her stomach. She'd lain there in the triage tent for hours after getting shot. Without Simon to take care of her, she was just another soldier who was dying and not a priority. She felt no pain though, she had left the world long ago and it was only because people still needed her that she continued to go through the motions of life and her work.  
~  
Mal stared at his Albatross. She didn't seem so lucky now, but maybe the luck only counted if you had a ship. It didn't matter either way because they were going to die soon, just like all the rest. He'd lost everyone left that meant anything to him, and it was all his fault. Some of them hadn't even seemed like anyone important to him until they died. He didn't realize that he truly cared about the doctor and the brutish mercenary. No matter the comfort others had tried to offer him, he couldn't feel okay about their deaths. They weren't together in some mystical afterlife, because that didn't exist. All that existed was blood and sweat and dirt and fear and death. His fingers closed tighter around the hole in River's side, her blood was sticky and warm in the folds of his palm. She was the last tether he had left and he owed it to all of them, even if they'd never know it, to keep her alive. More than that, he needed her quiet insanity and calm, uncanny insight.  
~  
River cried out as the Captain's hand dug in. Everything hurt and she just wanted it to stop. Tears coursed silently down her face, pain making her terrified. She wasn't sure where she was anymore. She was lying on the field bleeding on the Captain but she was in a chair at the academy with needles in her forehead but she was somewhere else that was dark and cold and lonely. She didn't want to die but she was in so much pain and so scared and she wanted it to stop. She blinked up at the Captain's blurry face but she saw others over his shoulder, her brother smiling in a way she hadn't seen in a very long time, Kaylee laughing and offering her a strawberry, Zoe and Wash hugging each other, Book watched her serenely, Inara held out a hand to her, and Jayne stood in the back standing guard with Vera clutched close to his chest. River felt safe and warm and comfortable.  
"Stay with me little Albatross," the Captain's voice was gruff and full of tears, "Don't make me lose you too."  
"Just going to sleep for a little while," she murmured, closing her eyes and welcoming herself into the crew's warm hug, "just going to sleep."


End file.
